


Afterglow

by sinkingsidewalks



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, It's real sad, we're in major depression hours over here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 17:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18877939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: “I think we just won the Olympics,” Tessa says, emotion clogging up her throat, tears pricking into her eyes, finally from something other than the pain ripping through her calves that’s maybe not so ripping just for this moment.





	Afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo yeah. We're here again. I don't know what to say other than this really is sad and please heed the major character death warning if that's not your jam.  
> Major thanks to Marcia and Chrissy and Ana and all the ladies in the gc for championing my fucked up ideas.

“I think we just won the Olympics,” Tessa says, emotion clogging up her throat, tears pricking into her eyes, finally from something other than the pain ripping through her calves that’s maybe not so ripping just for this moment. 

Igor pulls her into one of his hugs, stiff, and squeezing her shoulders too tight. She pats his back anyway and relishes. Not in _winning_ , or just not fucking up, but in the approval. This moment has no hard line frowns or harsh tones spilling out over a sheet of ice and echoing off the rafters. 

There’s only the roaring crowd. The antidote to a decade of self-judgement, to every bad word ever written about her, and to the tape measure drooling on the cold tile of the bathroom floor as she stood in front of a mirror. 

Scott’s voice is in her ear, bubbling with all the same emotions she feels, all the ones she doesn’t understand until she sees them in him, whispering for her alone to hear, “We did it kiddo.”

 

The night before the first skate she thinks very hard about walking away. She sits alone in her room, the desk lamp beside her bed glowing yellow so she can’t even pretend to be trying to sleep, the mattress hard and creaking beneath her weight, a nauseous panic sitting emulsified under her breastbone. 

She can’t leave, she knows that, hell she can’t even move. Has to limp her way to the bathroom once every few hours to dump the water out of her ice bucket. But also she’s trapped, the door may as well be locked from the outside; there should be bars on the window. A physical manifestation of the time that’s gone into getting here, the money. Of the expectations – her family’s, her coaches’, the country’s – piling up around her. Starting tomorrow, she has to win a gold medal.

She is, in a way, absolutely sure she can’t do it. That her legs will give out the moment the music starts and she’ll crash out of her opening position, onto the ice, in front of the world. And that will be it. The last four years of pain, of struggling against her own body, will disappear in an instant, useless. 

Her teeth are chattering, and it’s not from the cold soaking through her calves trying to numb out the pain. Not that it works. Not that anything works. 

Scott sticks his head in through the door, his hair floppy and disorganized, fresh out of a shower dripping water down onto his Canada red t-shirt. “Hey, kiddo.” He shoulders through the door, solid in his body and his place in the world. “Brought you more ice.”

The mattress springs protest as he drops down onto the bed beside her. All her thoughts of quitting get snuffed out. She could never do that to him. Not after everything they’ve worked through.

“How are you calm?” She grits out through her locked jaw. He hadn’t touched his plate in the dining hall earlier, had sat beside her with a stiff back, bouncing his knee at a hundred and forty beats per minute, which clenching and unclenching his fist. 

But now he lounges across the bottom of her little bed, muscles loose and at ease. She’s just a little bit bitter about it.

Scott shrugs. “We’ve got this.”

Except they don’t have it. Or if they do it’s only by fishing line burning through their palms, the fish at the other end a great white shark. And there’s no _they_. She is the shark that drags him down. When she read Hemmingway in tenth grade she never thought she’d be the Marlin.

But she can’t say any of that to him. Not when it would be so easy for them both to drown.

Instead, she pretends she believes him.

 

They never yell at each other in therapy. It’s a cardinal rule, never to be broken. Tacked onto the end of the list they made together as kids, sleeping on the pullout couch in the Moir’s basement, the night before a competition. 

No other partners. Skating before everything. No falling in love with each other. 

In therapy, Tessa sits with her ankles crossed and her hands folded on her knee on one end of a grey sofa. Scott’s on the other side. She spends the entire hour suppressing the urge to look at her watch. 

 

He doesn’t show up again until she steps foot back in the rink and by then she’s not even sure she wants to see him. But he’s beside her in the changing room while she pulls on her leg warmers. Sits silent while she yanks on the laces of her skates. 

He follows her out onto the ice, Marina watching with an eagle eye as she tests her edges, feels the absence of her muscle loss. 

She feels like a newborn fawn, like a toddler on the ice for the very first time. Her steps are clumsy, her upper body all balance and none of her usual grace. It puts a pit of nerves in her stomach at all the work she has to do. It’ll be weeks before she can try her jumps again, let alone get them back.

But the sharp air of the rink, cold and dry and metal in her mouth, still clears out the cobwebs of her mind. It feels like the last of the drugs have finally washed free from her system and she can think properly again. Scott is there and so is her clarity; she’s going to dance, she’s going to win, for him.

 

Waking up from surgery is pure agony. Her skull pounds and her whole body aches. The fluorescent lights drive iron spikes through her eyes and there may as well still be a scalpel in her calves. Every ounce of focus she once touched is gone. For what feels like hours she swims in and out of a blackness where she can’t remember her own name. Her mouth tastes like stomach bile. She might puke.

The worst part? Her hands are cold and she’s alone.

The day doesn’t get any better.

The antibiotics make her feel sick, the anti-nausea medication makes her feel feverish, and the painkillers take her out of her whole body. Her hands don’t feel like her hands; they shake when she tries to take a sip of water to quench her desert throat, the top of the glass a tiny tsunami, threatening to drench her horrid hospital gown until a nurse rushes in to steady her. 

She decides she doesn’t like strangers steadying her, something that never bothered her as a child, learning new turns and jumps on the ice, but now any presence that isn’t Scott’s feels assailing. The nurse is nice, no doubt, or at least the stereotype Tessa’s addled brain provides is. It’s impossible to tell what’s real and what’s not. Tessa drinks too deeply and throws up still cold water onto her. 

Once she’s released, Casey carries her up the stairs to her childhood bedroom and it makes her feel ten years old again. Her mom hovers, tucking the blankets around her and piling pillows to keep her legs elevated, plying her with juice to take her pills with. 

Tessa drifts in and out of sleep, feeling hollow, feeling alone. 

 

The first time it occurs to her that something may be wrong she’s alone in the rink. Well not alone, Scott’s there, stroking around the edges of the ice, but there’s no one real to witness as she falls out of her spin at center ice. 

Only the rafter lights are on, the office is darkened, everyone else has gone home for the day. Tessa’s only still there because Marina has a soft spot for her. 

She sits on the ice, snow melting into the butt of her leggings, rubbing at her shins like she has been a lot lately. And it suddenly clicks that she’s been rubbing at her shins a lot. 

“You good, kiddo?” Scott calls over to her.

She takes a breath. “Yeah, fine.” She shoves herself back up onto her skates to try the spin again and shakes it off. Maybe she’ll schedule herself an extra physio appointment this week.

 

Tessa doesn’t usually go to the Canton parties. She sticks to herself at the rink and in the changing room, heads home to London every Friday right after practice and doesn’t get back until late Sundays. She’s nice to the other girls because she was raised to be polite but she wouldn’t really call any of them her friends. 

They don’t really have anything in common, besides skating, and she’s never been one to have lots of close female friends. The only girl she’s ever really related to was Suzanne, and she was pretty much a grown up by the time they met. The big groups were always more Scott’s scene, and she only ever went along when he dragged her. 

But Meryl, one of the ice dancers who’s trying valiantly to be her friend, wouldn’t take no for an answer when she heard Tessa was staying in town for the weekend. Which is how she ends up in Meryl’s basement with a red solo cup of _something_ in her hand. Like something out of a teen movie. 

The plot plays out expectedly, and it’s not long before one of the guys from the rink she’s never spoken a word to before saddles up beside her. 

“Hey,” he says over the pounding bassline. 

Tessa smiles at him politely, excessively not interested. 

He leans on the wall, cool guy casual, a beer hanging out of his other hand. “I never usually see you around at these.”

“I go home most weekends.”

His expression shifts. “Oh, do you have a boyfriend there or something?”

She shakes her head. “No, just a partner.”

 

On her first day at Arctic Edge, she thinks she’s going to throw up. Her mom drives into the parking lot, up to the front doors she’s only passed through once before when she came to try out for Marina and Igor, and stops the car. Tessa can’t get out. 

She shouldn’t be here. She’s not good enough for this. The skaters inside this rink are professionals; she’s fifteen. What the hell was she thinking? Moving down here, separating her family, putting such a burden on them. And for what? How good of a skater does she think she is?

Scott strolls up to the car, calling out her name and her tension eases. He’s here. She’s not alone. 

“See you later,” She tells her mom, still nervous, but with a smile.

She gets out of the car and Scott’s presence wraps around her. He smacks a kiss on the top of her head. “This is gonna be great, kiddo.”

Together they walk into the rink.

 

Suze always takes her out for milkshakes after Sunday skating because her mom has to pick Jordan up from volleyball practice and can’t get to the rink until five. It’s become her favourite part of the week, she drinks a chocolate milkshake and they split a plate of fries while talking about skating or dance or anything. Sometimes she finishes her homework and Suze works on notes for programs but it’s still just as fun.

“How have you been, Tess?” Suzanne asks that week once the waitress drops off their usual order. 

“I’m fine.” Tessa shrugs, digging into the fries. She’s always so hungry after skating all afternoon that she doesn’t worry about spoiling her dinner. 

“You’re coping okay?” She presses, voice gentle and inviting. “You can talk to me about anything you’re feeling, you know that right?”

“Yeah,” she says around a mouthful of fries. Tessa shrugs again swallowing. “Not that much has changed.”

 

She’s laid out on her bed, atop her summer comforter, halfway through an old Amelia Bedelia book when there’s a quiet knock on her door. It’s a kid’s book and she doesn’t really read kid’s books anymore but it’s the last week of summer vacation and camp is over so she’s bored. Her mom doesn’t wait for her to answer before coming in the room and Tessa frowns into her book. 

“Tess, honey?” Her mom’s voice is soft, uncharacteristically tentative, so at least Tessa hasn’t forgotten to put her bowl in the dishwasher again. 

“Let me finish the page.” She skims along the page while her mom sits gently on the edge of her bed. It doesn’t take her more than a second to flip the page and set the book down to look up at her mom but when she does she finds tears edging into her mom’s eyes. Her mom never cries. She’s not like Alma who seems to get teary every time they skate. 

“What?!” She asks, heart suddenly pounding, thinking of her Grandma who was in the hospital last year and how worried everyone got. 

“Honey,” her mom puts a hand on Tessa’s calf and sniffs. Tess wants to shake her off and demand that everything be fine but her voice is caught in the uneasy feeling under her heart. 

“It’s about Scott.”

Then she’s standing up, on the rug in the middle of her room, and she’s not sure how she got there. “Is he okay? Can he not skate?” It would be just like Scott to get hurt doing some dumb boy thing and not be able to compete this year. 

“Come sit down.”

Tessa stands, her arms cross over her chest. Her mom sighs, wiping away another tear.

“There was an accident.”

“But he’s okay.” It’s not a question. It can’t be a question. _He’s Scott_ , he’s going to be there annoying her when she’s an old granny.

“Tessa,” her mom says way too gently. “He passed away this morning.”

 

 

She’s shocked by how small the coffin is. There’s no way that Scott’s that small. No way that his body is inside there. There must have been a mix up, and this is the funeral for some other, smaller, boy. Not Scott, who was always loud and large, who filled up entire arenas with his energy.

In the little church in Ilderton, bursting at the seams, she sits with a space next to her at the end of a pew, the warmth of her mother’s thigh burning through her tights on her other side. A priest, she assumes – that’s who it always is in the movies – drones on at the altar. Someone cries behind her but Tessa’s eyes are dry. 

She hasn’t cried – she won’t. She did throw up into the kitchen sink that morning, had been sitting at the kitchen table, mechanically eating a bowl of cheerios while her mom ironed her church dress in the other room and Jordan yelled at their brothers upstairs like any other day. Then all of a sudden there was bile in her throat, and she retched over the kitchen sink, tears in her eyes from the burn in her throat, gasping for breath until she was sure she was dying too. 

It still feels like there’s vomit in her hair; she didn’t have time to wash it out. 

Both of Scott’s brothers get up to speak, from crumpled papers held in shaking hands. Their voices float, over Tessa’s head, up into the rafters of the church, through the stained glass at the back of the building and disappear into the sky. 

After the wake she goes straight to her room. Her mom tries to call her to dinner, but she ignores it. Someone bangs on her door but is called away by a yell from her dad and she isn’t interrupted again.

She sits on her bed, knees curled into her chest. Her church dress is velvet and scratchy at the collar but she doesn’t get up to change. The sun sets slowly, the summer light lingering at the edges of the sky for what could be minutes or hours. Tessa waits until she’s sitting in pure darkness, until there’s not even the light from the hall slipping under the door. 

He appears, not quite ghostly but a little shiny around the edges, and she doesn’t gasp or startle. She knew he wasn’t really gone. 

 

Suze sits her down after practice one day, leads her into the big office where Paul is waiting and they sit in the little trio of chairs in the corner. Scott paces the room across from them, snapping a piece of gum between his teeth. 

The conversation feels like it happens too fast for her to follow even though she knows both her coaches are speaking in slow deliberate tones. Even so she only catches snippets, _opportunity_ and _Marina_ and _Michigan_. The words don’t make any sense until they do: they want her to leave here. 

This rink, where she perfected her edge work and landed her first triple. Where Scott follows at her shoulder, singing the songs to her and helping her through each step of the program. They want her to leave it all behind, to go to a place where Scott has never been, where he will never be, and start over. Panic swims in her throat. 

“I don’t know.” She looks past Suze to Scott.

His eyes are wide, staring at her, but there’s also a grin, creeping up his face and overtaking his surprise. He shrugs, face full of joy, telling her what to do in contrast to his body language. He says, _Do whatever you want, kiddo._

She thinks about all the things they dreamed about. World Championships and Olympic Games, being the best of the best, with no one having a dream of beating them. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. Scott gives her another shrug but she knows what his vote is. 

Very slowly, like a cartoon falling off a cliff, she nods. “Okay.”

 

The doctor says retirement and she bolts out of the room. 

It’s too much. Conflicting emotions riot through her body, her thoughts hammer at her skull, and she has to get out of the building before she throws up on this very sterile looking floor. 

Her legs only get her to the front of the building, and she collapses onto the front steps, staring out at the barren parking lot, lungs heaving. After a moment, Scott emerges beside her. 

“I can’t do it,” She whispers. There’s still too much, too much to think about, to worry about. It’s so overwhelming she doesn’t know how to do anything at all.

_Yes, you can. If you want, you can._ Scott replies. 

Tessa buries her head in her hands, presses her forehead to her knees and her palms into her cheeks. Her chest aches. She has to tell him she’s done. That she can’t make it any farther without him. It’s all over. 

She feels him lean on her, the not quite sensation of his arm around her shoulders. For a second she misses, so acutely it feels like her heart’s been torn, when he was still alive. 

It’s just enough to find her resolve again.

 

Tessa sits in the cold sand, watching the Pacific Ocean rise and fall, trying to match her breath to the waves crashing over the shoreline. It’s quiet, except for the sea and an errant gull’s cry, and she hasn’t been able to relish in silence for three weeks. 

For three weeks her every waking hour has been stress and pressure. There was practice, and skating, and media. Half the time she couldn’t figure out if she was happier than she’d ever been or the saddest. Even now, as the tide pulls out and evening sets in, she doesn’t know what to feel.

The Olympics are over. She has her gold medal.

Scott appears beside her. _Hey kiddo._

She digs the heels of her runners into the sand. “Hey,” she says not looking at him. She knows what he looks like – it’s a manifestation of her own imagination. 

_I’m so proud of you._ He sounds almost choked up. She turns to face him, touches the bridge of his nose. His face is still so young; she wonders what he would have looked like as an old man. 

He smiles into her palm that cups his cheek. _I think I’ve gotta go now._

She nods, she’s been feeling it too. “Is it because of this?” She gestures to the gold around her neck. 

_No, no, I think it’s been time for a while._

The ocean breathes, pulling in and away; Tessa follows it, Scott doesn’t.

_Do you think you’ll skate still?_

She looks down at her legs, the scars still raised from her skin under her leggings; they ache all the time. Like the pin in a hip replacement in cold weather. Phantom pains, or dying tissue, she doesn’t know which is which anymore. She shakes her head.

“Not without you.”

She has her gold medal.

She only wishes she could have won him one too.

**Author's Note:**

> It's officially a pattern, I move, I kill off Scott. Sorry? I'll try to stay here for a bit maybe? Anyways, yell at me in the comments for this I guess, or on tumblr where I'm also @sinkingsidewalks


End file.
